Recently acquired passer Jacoby Brissett has played well as the team’s starter in Luck’s place, but the Colts are undeniably worse without the No. 1 pick in the 2012 NFL draft on the field.

His absence has been somewhat of a mystery. While Luck’s surgery was described by Colts owner Jim Irsay as an outpatient procedure that wouldn’t threaten the 2017 regular season, it has clearly become a more significant issue than that. Luck has yet to play this season.

March 1984 gave us the Indianapolis Colts and the dominoes fell favorably for Arizona, Jacksonville, and even Baltimore — which got a two-time Super Bowl winner in the Ravens.

If there’s one city that has reason to wish for an alternate reality it’s St. Louis — although it would’ve taken a convoluted series of events to keep the Rams in Missouri. All in all, most cities can be happy with the way things shook out when the Mayflower trucks shipped off for Indianapolis.

Luck missed all of 2017 with a shoulder injury that began two years prior.

The Patriots lost out on Moss and his record-setting offense in that scenario, but they’d profit from another what if further down the line. Antonio Brown neglected a phone call from the Buffalo Bills on draft day in 2010, clearing a path to wind up with the Steelers as a sixth-round pick. If he hadn’t — and if he’d be forced to languish with Ryan Fitzpatrick, Trent Edwards, and Brian Brohn at quarterback — there’s a chance he would have been one of Bill Belichick’s targets as an in-division free agent acquisition in 2013.

In reality, NFL contracts are just a series of one-year deals strung together to avoid the hassle of having to renegotiate with 53+ players every year. Imagine how chaotic it would be for a front office if every year they had to meet with every player to re-do their contracts.

Enter guaranteed money. Because every player is looking to get as much cash as possible into his pocket, more and more agents are pushing for a higher percentage of their clients’ contracts to be guaranteed for one or more of skill, injury and cap.

Besides the signing bonus, usually the rest of the guarantees come in the form of the base salary.